Try Eating Artichokes?

The early Church leader, St. Augustine, once was confronted by a man who showed him his pagan idol and said, “Here is my god; where is yours?” Augustine replied, “I cannot show you my God because you have no eyes to see Him.” To which we might add, “We cannot show each other ‘our’ God — the God revealed to us in the life and teachings and ministry of Jesus Christ — if we have no eyes to see Him because of our own misguided notions of who God is.

In today’s Gospel Lesson, Jesus addresses this problem in a confrontation with the Pharisees. It all begins when the Pharisees notice that Jesus’ disciples eat without first following the ancient custom of “scrupulously washing their hands.” They ask Jesus, “Why do Your disciples not follow the tradition of our ancestors, but instead take food without purifying their hands?” And Jesus answers, “How accurately Isaiah prophesied about you hypocrites when he wrote,

This people…